


Ilex

by seahorsepencils



Category: Major Crimes (TV), The Closer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/F, Goodbye Dumpster Fire, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Slow Burn, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-17 21:26:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13085691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seahorsepencils/pseuds/seahorsepencils
Summary: Brenda sadness, maybe leading to multi-chapter slow burn. AU for all of Major Crimes but mentions (dismisses) events from 6.09 in the process.





	Ilex

**Author's Note:**

> I've been thinking about writing this for months after coming up with an AU that made sense to me, but it morphed into something very different after last night.
> 
> Prose is my weakness, but I've been reading some Edith Wharton while I write. I think it's helping.

Brenda can feel the rain in her bones.

She sits in bed. Sinking. Her only move all morning has been to stop lying down and sit up against her pillow. Joel’s ears had pricked up, until he realized moments later that it was never her intent to leave the bed. Sitting isn’t progress, not this morning. It forces her awake, which makes her feel hollow, removes the one shred of comfort and denial that she had so gainfully relied upon for the previous three mornings.

It’s raining and it feels like it will never stop—she's confident that it won't. So she sits. Her feet line up symmetrically, pinned down by blankets.

Her eyes dart toward the clock, again. 9:37. It’s 9:37. It was 9:36 the last time. She’s had enough. Really she has. Curling back down under the sheets would be subterfuge, though. No more evasive maneuvers.

On the first day, Joel had sat in the doorway and waited for her. Now he knows better. He sleeps in a ball at the foot of the bed. Waiting patiently, trusting her. It's more than she deserves.

She has an appointment in her therapist in half an hour. She needs to get out of bed.

\---

She rubs her thumbnail against her bottom lip. Her therapist watches her inquisitively through round glasses.

“Are you goin’ to tell me to join a book club?” Brenda asks.

“Hmm?”

“After I signed my divorce papers, you said I should take a yoga class. I figured with the trial..." She trails off.

“You figured what?”

“I don’t know. Aren’t you gonna say the trial has been stressin’ me out and I should join a book club, or somethin’?”

“No.” Her therapist smiles. “It’s over, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. I don’t know.” Brenda’s lip is starting to feel sore. Raw. She pulls her hand down and stares at her fingernails. “It’s over. I always thought I’d feel more relieved.”

“Why’s that?”

Brenda shrugs. She feels like she’s being watched, but she never knows how exactly to cover the silence.

“I had a dream last night—this mornin’. It’s the same one—I’ve had the same one four nights in a row.” She stares determinedly at her hand. “It’s probably stupid.” Fuck, she feels self-conscious. She’d gotten better at being honest. It took two months after her mother’s death before she decided to see a therapist. Six months after that to accept that needing help meant admitting things, not hiding behind flowery skirts and an incredulous smile. It was helping. But she felt like a vulnerable idiot every time she was there.

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don't want.”

Great. Her discomfort was that obvious. So much for being a master of deception.

“It’s just…about this woman I used to work with. I keep dreamin’ that she married one of my lieutenants from Major Crimes—they can’t stand each other and suddenly it’s fine and they’re married, and then at the end…I don’t know how to explain it. She becomes like me. She’s yellin’ at a suspect and it kills her, she literally dies and I wake up feelin’ like it was my fault. And it’s not even real, I mean…it just feels like it is."

“And you feel guilty? Because she’s acting like you?”

“I don’t know. It feels like I made her into somethin’ she isn’t.”

“Is there any reason you would feel that way? Have you been in touch with her?”

“No. No, I haven’t.” _Not since the night I shot him_ , she wants to say. But as much as she trusts her therapist, as much as she's given herself permission to let down her guard and admit some things, she’s not ready to recount that night. She’s not ready to admit that she sat on the floor of her hotel room and cried in Sharon Raydor’s arms. For now, that stays between them.


End file.
